Democracy in peril: This was the week Britons finally despaired of their leaders. It may be remembered as a disastrous turning point in our history

This week saw Britain’s first ‘Grillo moment’. Just as on Sunday a quarter of Italians responded to their country’s dire political and economic crisis by voting for comedian Beppe Grillo, so on Thursday, the Liberal Democrat candidate was elected to parliament in the Eastleigh by‑election.

Worse still for David Cameron, his own party was pushed into third place by Ukip, a protest movement that blames the European Union for almost everything from global warming to the failure of Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust.

Of course the result — which also offered no comfort to fourth-placed Labour — represented a gesture of disgust towards mainstream politicians which lots of people far from suburban Hampshire will welcome.

On Thursday, the Lib Dem candidate Mike Thornton was elected to parliament in the Eastleigh by-election

But it is very frightening that the relatively prosperous and educated voters of Eastleigh, at a critical moment in the nation’s fortunes, have given victory to the flat-earthers, reality-deniers, wind-farmers, euro-nutters, enemies of welfare reform and tax-us-till-the-pips-squeakers.

Media coverage of the by-election campaign focused upon the allegations of sexual harassment against former Lib Dem strategist Lord Rennard, and what the party’s leader Nick Clegg knew about them.

But Thursday’s poll suggested that the electorate cared no more about this issue than about the fact that their last Lib Dem MP, Chris Huhne, had been forced to stand down and will shortly begin his retirement from politics in a prison cell.

The good folk of Eastleigh simply wanted to give a giant raspberry to the Conservatives, and that is what they did.

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David Cameron’s Downing Street often seems a complacent place, whose resident born-to-rulers believe that come General Election day in 2015, the nation must reject what is offered by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls; that Cameron must remain Prime Minister because he is the only credible choice.

But the Eastleigh result shatters such delusions. It shows that voters are not always interested in thinking coolly and rationally. They dislike Tory ministers and Tory policies — not to mention the EU — so much that they are willing to smash any quantity of furniture to show their feelings.

This should alarm everybody who cares about the future of Britain.

It suggests that unless Cameron can raise his game dramatically, he is heading for a place in history somewhere between John Major and Ethelred the Unready.

Get lost! An Eastleigh resident shows their disgust

If Boris Johnson currently held a Commons seat instead of the London mayoralty, Cameron’s party leadership would be imperilled.

Eastleigh’s verdict also indicates that in Britain, as in many other parts of the world, democracy is in deep trouble — apparently incapable of delivering strong government with strong mandates to do the tough things that are necessary.

Italy, mired in debt and structural problems, last week voted for paralysis. France has given itself a comic opera socialist regime, in denial about the nation’s predicament. The Spanish government is engulfed in debt. Greece is still an economic basket-case.

In this country, opinion polls suggest that the most likely winner of the next election is Labour, whose key figures not merely refuse to accept responsibility for bankrupting us when they were in power in the first decade of the century, but cling doggedly to the big lie that there was nothing wrong with the economy until the Coalition got its hands on it in 2010.

Meanwhile, the party that triumphed at Eastleigh has a coherent message only for inhabitants of Narnia.

The Lib Dems’ chosen role in the Coalition Government is to be for ever softening ‘brutal’ Tory policies, stopping spending cuts, loving Europe, paralysing energy policy and blocking a showdown on human rights or immigration.

Consider their mission statement, proclaimed on the party’s website: ‘The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.

‘We champion the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals, we acknowledge and respect their right to freedom of conscience and their right to develop their talents to the full. We aim to disperse power, to foster diversity and to nurture creativity.

‘We believe the role of the state is to enable all citizens to attain these ideals, to contribute fully to their communities and to take part in the decisions which affect their lives.’

This banquet of vacuity captures the authentic spirit of Cleggdom.

Nowhere does it mention economic growth, profit, a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, low taxation, limits on state largesse, promotion of excellence or admission that, if our society wants winners, it must also have losers.

Popular: If Boris Johnson (left) currently held a Commons seat instead of the London mayoralty, Cameron's party leadership would be imperilled

The Lib Dems’ whole being is rooted in evading tough choices.

The fact that they have 57 seats in the Commons sadly reflects the willingness of a frightening number of voters to endorse blancmange governance.

But if the Lib Dems constitute an embarrassment to democracy, from a Tory standpoint, Ukip represents a serious threat.

Nigel Farage’s party threatens to have the same wrecking impact on the Conservatives at the next General Election as did the tycoon Sir James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party (which he set up to try to let Britons decide their future relationship with the EU in a referendum) in 1997.

Many Tory supporters now embrace chaos theory politics. That is to say they think their party needs to be soundly beaten in 2015 in order to allow a great cleansing and resurrection which will eventually yield a new, ‘proper’ version with staunchly Right-wing views. This would sweep the board at the next-but-one election and lead Britain back to greatness.

I myself might support many of the policies of such a party, and maybe you would, too. Unfortunately, however, there are simply not enough old, white, Archers-listening, roses-round-the-door traditionalists like us to have the smallest chance of winning a 21st-century British election.

A serious threat: Nigel Farage's Ukip party threatens to have a wrecking impact on the Conservatives at the next General Election

Such a party would almost certainly wind up as ghettoised as the American Republicans who have now lost two presidential elections in a row.

David Cameron is well aware of this. He is right to think it delusional to believe that losing any election can be ‘good for the party’. The only thing that matters in politics is to secure and keep power.

Imagine what Miliband and Balls would do should they lead Britain’s largest party after the 2015 vote and form a government with a Lib Dem rump. The inevitable result would be a Britain taxed with a brutality as yet unknown. A new mansion tax would only be the start.

The current government’s feeble efforts to check immigration would be swept aside. A Labour-run coalition would pick up where Tony Blair and Gordon Brown left off — admitting millions more migrants to Britain to create an almost indestructible Left-wing electoral consensus.

On other issues, Miliband would foreswear any attempt to change our relationship with Europe.

But if voters need to think hard about the choices available to them, and especially about the ghastly consequences of voting for UKIP, David Cameron needs to think harder still.

His predicament looks dire, and he urgently needs to reshape his premiership.

For a start, he must work harder. It is time to end all the nonsense about awarding himself quality ‘chillax’ time with his wife, driving the children to school and suchlike. If he wanted a balanced life, he should never have taken the job of Prime Minister.

He must stop posturing on the world stage in a way that all Prime Ministers love and few voters care sixpence for. He should focus 25 hours a day on reviving his floundering domestic leadership.

He needs to listen to the army of his own backbenchers and even ministers who feel neglected and, thus, disgruntled. He must provide his government with the drive and coherence it conspicuously lacks.

Above all, he needs a purge of his Downing Street team, which has secured an unenviable reputation for arrogance, isolation, insensitivity and incompetence.

For example, how could his advisers have allowed him to impale himself on gay marriage? The Tories’ Eastleigh campaign achieved its only little kick of excitement when candidate Maria Hutchings admitted her distaste for the measure.

The Prime Minister’s handling of the issue emphasised his tactical clumsiness.

Focus: Cameron must stop posturing on the world stage in a way that all Prime Ministers love and few voters care sixpence for. He should focus 25 hours a day on reviving his floundering domestic leadership

If he was obliged to associate himself with this unpopular measure which the Lib Dems wanted, at the very least he should have told Nick Clegg: ‘You get gay marriage only if we get constituency boundary changes.’

Cameron did nothing of the sort, and thus alienated many of his own natural supporters for no reward.

Cameron’s policy advisers, the likes of Oliver Letwin and Francis Maude, are undoubtedly clever, but seem not to inhabit the same planet as the rest of us.

There seems nobody in the PM’s circle with acute political or media instincts such as Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, repulsive as they were, provided to Tony Blair.

On the positive side, Cameron’s government can claim progress towards some important achievements in reforming education, the benefits system and the NHS. But it has failed to construct and map out a vision that the electorate can understand, showing where it wants to take Britain. It offers no ‘big picture’.

Cause for concern: A Labour-run coalition would pick up where Tony Blair and Gordon Brown left off - admitting millions more migrants to Britain to create an almost indestructible Left-wing electoral consensus

It seems to regard the mere business of keeping the Coalition ticking over as sufficient reason for its existence, which it is not.

Most politics is about communication, words.

The only moment for many months when David Cameron displayed an impressive passion and sincerity were in his January speech on Europe, when he offered a referendum in 2017.

But most often, these qualities are absent from his rhetoric.

Unless Cameron can find means of defusing Ukip, and the political threat posed by the European issue, between now and 2015, he is dead meat.

The economy, of course, remains the Government’s gravest problem. Almost every forecast made by the Chancellor since 2010 — concerning growth, inflation, the reduction of debt, the transfer of resources from state spending and exports — has gone unfulfilled.

Cameron has no sensible alternative but to sack Osborne - a harsh sacrifice to political realities

George Osborne has also borne the odium for making ‘savage’ cuts in public spending while achieving nothing of the sort.

He has certainly had bad luck, and his instinct for cutting state spending is the right one. But voters don’t like him, and, more seriously, nobody much believes in him any more. Justly or otherwise, most of the country considers him personally responsible for economic stagnation.

Thus, Cameron has no sensible alternative but to sack George Osborne — a harsh sacrifice to political realities.

Since the two men are personally inseparable, however, this is unlikely to happen.

Cameron will, therefore, go to the polls with a Chancellor who is a huge electoral liability.

Meanwhile, Downing Street comforts itself with the prospect that the economy should revive a little next year; that somehow Osborne will contrive some sort of tax giveaway before the next General Election.

On the basis of this week’s news, however, it seems unlikely these crumbs will suffice to save Cameron’s government. He is in deep trouble, and it is hard to see who will get him out of it.

The Eastleigh by-election is likely to be remembered as a political turning point.

This week, voters turned their backs on the huge problems facing the country and the real choices that need making.

If asked, they might reason: ‘But this wasn’t a General Election. We were surely allowed to do what by‑election voters have always done — kick the party in power.’

But what if the whole country acts equally recklessly at the next General Election, as Italy and France have already done?

Without even intending to do it — merely by voting for Ukip, the Lib Dems or the Save The Badgers Party — they could give Ed Miliband and Ed Balls they keys to No 10.

If such a catastrophe comes to pass, something much more important than David Cameron will have been lost. Democracy in Britain will have failed because the people will have despaired of their politicians.